Zürich - Die Debatte über neue Atomkraftwerke wird vor allem wegen der immer noch ungelösten Frage der Abfall-Entsorgung blockiert. Transatomic Power, unter anderem von Daniel Aegerter's Armada Investment unterstützt, sucht neue Wege, um den Abfall zu neuer Energie zu wandeln. Die Trillionen Dollar-Wette, welche die Welt verändern könnte.
Interview from Caroline Fairchild, Linkedin.com
Caroline Fairchild: How do you explain to engineering outsiders what you do?
Leslie Dewan: I am extremely lucky in that I have the coolest job imaginable. It involves the coolest, exciting new engineering and business development and the possibility to help people in the long run. We are developing a new type of nuclear reactor that can run entirely on nuclear waste. It is able to consume the waste that is left behind by the current generation of nuclear power plants. It is able to do so very safely and extremely cheaply. Ultimately, we want to be able to design a power plant that is significantly cheaper than coal so we can out compete coal on cost and create vast amounts of clean energy for both the developed and developing world.
How did you come up with the idea for Transatomic Power?
We started playing around with a bunch of different reactor designs while we were still at school and we were excited about forming a company around this technology. We were excited about bringing the design to commercialization fast. By 2011, we had finished an early set of scoping simulations and found out that we could get this type of reactor to maintain criticality using the existing nuclear waste from the typical power plants. We talked to a lot of professors in departments and had them kick the tires on the idea and sort out if they found it viable. They really encouraged us to commercialize it, so we incorporated the company in April 2011 and raised some seed funding at that time.
Why do you think it was a concept that no one thought of before?
Interestingly enough, they came up with a very similar reactor design in the 1950s. In the 1960s they created a prototype that demonstrated that it ...
Den vollständigen Artikel lesen ...